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IN BRIEF
- Russia has urged foreigners to leave Kyiv before the attacks.
- More than 300 sites in Kyiv were damaged by the strike, killing two people and injuring 91.
Russian Forces Announce Planned Strikes on Kyiv, Urge Foreigners to Exit City
Russian military officials have announced their intention to carry out a “series of systematic strikes” targeting Ukrainian military installations in Kyiv. They have advised all foreign nationals to vacate the city immediately.
The announcement from Moscow came on Tuesday, urging foreigners to leave the Ukrainian capital ahead of the impending military actions focusing on strategic sites.
Russia’s foreign ministry stated these forthcoming strikes are a retaliatory measure following what they claim was a deliberate Ukrainian drone attack on a student dormitory in Luhansk, a region under Russian control in eastern Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military, however, has refuted these claims, asserting that their operations targeted a sophisticated drone command center in the region instead.
Russian authorities said at least 18 students from a teacher training college were killed.
A total of 48 people were reported injured.
The Ukrainian military stated that the target had been a Russian military unit specialising in drone attacks against Ukraine.
“Under these circumstances, the armed forces of the Russian Federation are launching a series of systematic strikes against Ukrainian military-industrial complex enterprises in Kyiv,” the Russian ministry said in a statement.
The strikes will include specific sites involved in the design and manufacture of drones as well as decision-making centres and command posts, it said.
In Kyiv, rescuers worked on Monday to deal with earlier Russian strikes on the Ukrainian capital on Sunday, which local authorities said had killed two people and injured 91.
Russia fired an Oreshnik hypersonic missile near Kyiv — its third use of the nuclear-capable weapon in the more than four-year-old war.
About 300 sites across Kyiv were damaged, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
One of the sites was a newly opened museum commemorating the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
More than 70 foreign diplomats paid their respects to the victims of the strikes in Kyiv, visiting a heavily damaged neighbourhood in Lukyanivka on Monday.
France’s ambassador to Ukraine, Gael Veyssiere, noted that ordinary people had returned to work on Monday and were going about their daily lives.
“It’s a way to demonstrate resilience and I think it’s extremely important that we, around the world, we would support that,” Veyssiere told the Reuters news agency.
Meanwhile, Ukraine continued its own attacks against Russian infrastructure and industrial assets.
In Russia’s Belgorod region, one man was killed and another injured in a missile and drone attack that also cut power and water supplies, local authorities said on Telegram.
Four people, including two teenagers, were killed in the Russian-controlled eastern Ukrainian town of Horlivka, its mayor Ivan Prikhodko said on Monday on Telegram, blaming a Ukrainian attack.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
Russian and Ukrainian forces deny deliberately targeting civilians since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
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